First post, by 640K!enough
I finally decided to get my old AdLib Gold out of storage to see if it really sounded as good as I thought I remembered. So far, the results haven't exactly been what I would have hoped for. Of course, the machine I am using is far newer than what was available at the time of the AdLib Gold, and that seems to be causing most of the problems.
Initially, about the only thing I could do well was load the control chip driver and update the configuration; everything else would fail. The FM timer tests resulted in a rather loud, distorted buzzing that persisted after the test completed. The FM tests produced noise louder than the output, and trying to play RL2 files resulted in noise, missing notes, distorted instruments and PCM percussion that was (sometimes) either truncated or outright missing.
I decided to try changing a few settings, to see if that would improve the situation. Increasing the 8- and 16-bit I/O recovery time helped; the FM timer tests passed consistently. Increasing it more allowed the MMA timer tests to pass, too. However, trying the timer tests again after using the Jukebox Gold software still has the MMA timer tests failing (usually timer 0 and the concurrent timer tests); FM timer tests are still fine. Is this a peculiarity of their software, or do the timer tests usually still pass after using the RL2 player?
I also noticed that their software is somewhat inconsistent. In the setup application, it is possible to specify that an IRQ should not be used, and it is supposed to default to software polling. However, even with that selected, some software still seems to read it as having an IRQ selected, which caused trouble with the device that was actually supposed to be using those resources. I gave it its own IRQ, but neither improves the timer test situation.
I suppose there could be something wrong with my board, but I suspect finding ways to slow down my system further would help with the MMA timers. Disabling all caches still wasn't enough, so what tools do you generally like for providing additional speed reductions in situations like these?
I still have the card, but haven't managed to find the original software diskettes. The version on vogonsdrivers.com seems to contain most of what I remember, but there are a few things missing. I seem to remember a rather decent MOD player being included. Is there any chance someone still has that available? If it's not appropriate for vogonsdrivers, as an addition to the software package, please let me know what it was called; I'm hoping to be able to track that down somewhere.
Lastly, I'm noticing a good deal of background hiss that I don't remember from when the card was new. Is that "normal" for the Gold, possibly a result of the on-board amplifier used, or might replacing the ageing through-hole capacitors help?
EDIT: Corrected spelling error.
